Will Trump’s Immigration Policies Hurt US Nobel Chances?

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GWhile rowing, Omar Yaghi shared a room with his siblings – and livestock – in Amman, Jordan, without access to running water or electricity. The son of Palestinian refugees who “barely knew how to read or write,” the University of California, Berkeley researcher was captivated by chemistry from an early age after contemplating “stick and ball” models of molecules in a library. This week, Yaghi received a share of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on groundbreaking materials called metal-organic structures.

Yaghi moved to the United States at age 15, first attending community college and eventually earning his doctorate. in chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His journey is not unique: half of this year’s American Nobel Prize winners in science are immigrants. Researchers with stories similar to Yaghi’s have propelled the country’s global scientific rise for generations. But with increasingly restrictive immigration policies and austerity in science funding implemented by President Donald Trump’s administration, the nation’s top ranking in research — and future Nobel Prizes — are at stake.

“The Trump administration is systematically discouraging international students and undermining the research infrastructure that attracts them,” says James Witte, professor emeritus at George Mason University and former director of its Immigration Research Institute. “These students will find their academic home elsewhere.”

“I think we will certainly see a long-term decline in American science as a whole, as measured by Nobel laureates.”

The United States has not always been the academic powerhouse that it is today. Before World War II, Nobel Prize winners were mostly from European institutions; before the 1930s, researchers affiliated with American institutions received less than 12% of all scientific Nobel Prizes. But as the country invested more in research and conflicts roiled Europe, foreign scientists increasingly migrated to the United States. Among the most famous in this exodus were Albert Einstein, who escaped Nazi Germany, eventually landing in the United States, and Enrico Fermi, who fled fascist Italy by attending the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm and from there decamping to New York. At the time, most researchers emigrating to the United States were from Europe, some of whom, like Fermi, contributed to the Manhattan Project.

This trend helped fuel the United States as it rose to scientific pre-eminence. From 1941 to 1950, researchers working at American institutions accounted for 47 percent of all Nobel Prize winners in scientific categories, 19 percent of whom were immigrants.

“It was a period when the United States launched the golden age of science and innovation,” says Ina Ganguli, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Increasing numbers of Asian scientists, particularly from India and China, began arriving in the United States in the 1960s. This coincided with the end of immigration quotas affecting Asian countries and, a decade later, with the opening of the Chinese economy. The American share of Nobel Prizes peaked between 1991 and 2000. During this period, American scientists accounted for 72% of all academic Nobel Prize winners – a quarter of these winners were immigrants.

In search of abundant academic opportunities, researchers and students from around the world continued to flock to the United States. After earning their doctorates, the majority of international STEM students settle here and begin their scientific careers, some working their way to a Nobel or other honors over the decades. A study examining the career trajectories of young International Mathematics Olympiad medalists found that those who immigrated to the United States had more productive careers than those who moved to other countries. This higher productivity in the United States is likely due to more abundant resources and opportunities, says Ganguli, one of the paper’s authors.

Beyond the rewards, immigrants have a huge impact on innovation: In 2011, 76 percent of patents awarded to the nation’s top patent-producing universities “had at least one foreign-born inventor” on the team, according to a report from the Partnership for a New American Economy.

But over the past two decades, the share of international students at U.S. universities and colleges has declined. This is likely linked to the rising costs of schooling here, Witte says, which are particularly prohibitive for people arriving from low- and middle-income countries. The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the strict immigration policies of the first Trump administration, likely also played a role, Ganguli adds.

Today, the Trump administration’s increasingly restrictive policies could exacerbate the slowing flow of international academic talent to the United States by attacking academia on multiple fronts. On the one hand, significant cuts and freezes in federal funding threaten research programs that have long attracted researchers from around the world. Getting here is becoming more and more difficult. The administration this summer introduced travel bans and restrictions affecting nearly 19 countries, is ramping up student visa screening and recently imposed a hefty $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications. This latest policy change could lead to “catastrophic setbacks” for U.S. research, according to higher education groups that recently filed a lawsuit challenging the fees.

The potential impacts on the United States’ chances of winning a Nobel Prize probably won’t be obvious at first, says Patrick Gaule, an economist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and co-founder of the Global Talent Fund, a nonprofit that supports STEM students around the world. Over time, more young students may choose to attend universities in countries other than the United States, taking their prize-winning intelligence with them.

“It’s a very long gestation period with the Nobels,” says Gaule, because it can take decades for research to mature to the point of being recognized by these prizes.

But an exodus of scientists already further along in their careers could have more immediate effects, Ganguli says. Even early in Trump’s current term, Canada and Europe were courting American scientists. Seventy-five percent of American scientists surveyed by the journal Nature said they were considering leaving the country, according to a survey released in March.

“If we continue at this pace with more [immigration] restrictions, then I think we will definitely see a long-term decline in American science as a whole, as measured by Nobel laureates,” Ganguli says. “The big question is: How soon is this going to happen?”

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Main image: AntonSAN / Shutterstock

• Molly Glick

  Published on October 10, 2025

  Molly Glick is the newsletter editor of Nautilus.